The Unbelievable Doctor
by FireflyEmbers
Summary: "D-Doctor," Rose stammered, clutching at his arm. "That's- That's a real dragon, yeah?" He was, of course, no use, staring at the creature before him with this huge, goofy grin on his face. "Oh, that's beautiful. Look, Rose, a dragon! Fantastic!"
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

This crossover features the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler meeting a cast of original characters, including one very special Storyteller. Takes place sometime in Season 2 of Doctor Who, after the Age of Steel but before Doomsday. For Toby and the rest of Believe, it takes place 2-3 years after the events of the original trilogy.

Doctor Who and its universe are property of someone else, not me. Probably BBC or some other clever Brit. Toby and just about everyone else are my own creations, however. : )

Enjoy!

**Prologue.**

It waited in the dark, in the cold and in the emptiness. It had been in the dark for so long now - oh, so very long. It had forgotten the light and the warmth of it, the sharp, loud, truth of it. Instead, there was simply darkness and the silence that fell over everything like a thick, immutable blanket. The only thing it had not forgotten was the desire, the hunger, the want that had grown so large in its time in the dark, filling every portion of its being until there was nothing left but it.

It had sensed the crack immediately, like a sudden cold breeze rustling through the stillness that was its existence. It reached out, stretching through the vacancy of its prison to touch the ragged edges of the tear.

It reached all the way Out. All the way.

There'd been cracks before. Little ones, just scratching the very surface of its prison. Some had even appeared that reached all the way through to give it glimpses of what lay beyond. They'd all been the same, however, blocked by too much interference, not enough room through for it to squeeze even the tiniest portion of itself Out. It'd been trapped - until now.

The crack was still small, not big enough for it to fit its entire self out, but it was enough. It was just enough for it to reach out, through the cold and dark and into the hot light of being. Enough to cast out its fingers, just the very tips of them, and feel the answer to all of its problems.

Brighter than a sun, glowing with enough heat and brilliance to banish even the deepest shadows in its prison, it found the key. There were so few left - when it had first been banished to the dark and the depths, there had been many such keys, many such connections whisking about the reaches of space around it. It had been unlucky that a crack had not been large enough to pull one through before, and now there were so very few it was all the luck it had remaining to brush even one.

But it was patient, and it was cunning, and it laid its fingertips out like a trap. It wasn't long before it felt the slightest brush of it - a bright spot. With this, it would escape. With this, it would be free of its prison. With this, it would finally sate the hunger that gnawed through its very being, clawing away everything before the sheer want of it.

It snatched.


	2. Foreword

**(( Feel free to skip this if you're just interested in the story - ))**

**Foreword.**

It's a terrible thing to be an author with too many ideas. It's sheer torture to be an author bursting with ideas while stress or real life worries culminate in that age-old, dreaded affliction... writer's block. There is literally nothing worse than sitting in front of a computer screen, knowing that the story's already there in your head, all you have to do is put it down, and finding that when you try nothing comes out. And when that writer's block persists for months, you tend to lose faith in yourself as a writer. So when that one idea comes along that makes you sit down and type, and you find the words again, you follow it and don't ruin the moment.

I hope, however, that even though this means no new updates to Book 3, you will enjoy the answer to a question my boyfriend posed after a late night TV marathon - what if my own Toby, last Princess and Storyteller, met Doctor Who?

Oh boy, I said, and 'oh boy' turned into this. I suppose I should warn you right off the bat that if you're following my series and don't like spoilers, this does take place about three years after the events in the trilogy. They don't reference things specifically, but there will be certain unavoidable spoilers (like, who lives), so bear that in mind. If you're a Whovian, it's 10 and Rose. Yes, I'm one of THOSE rabid fangirls. I imagine it'd take place sometime in Season 2, before the events of Doomsday. Still, I couldn't help but make a few jokes that technically the Doctor wouldn't get until later seasons.

I have to admit, it's kind of sad how well this meshed together. In my defense, Toby and her world were fully fleshed out LONG before I discovered my Who obsession. But the more I sat and thought about it, the more the two universes didn't seem that different at all. I'm going to do my best to stay true to both and give you an interesting, entertaining, iclever/i story.

Enjoy. :)


	3. Chapter 1

1.

"Did you see her face?"

The twin doors of the TARDIS swung open, spilling a square of sunlight across the darkened interior as the tall man in a long brown jacket strode inwards, followed closely by a laughing blonde, both of their clothes covered with streaks of dust in every conceivable color - blue and purple and green and red and more.

"Wasn't my fault! 'Ow was I supposed to know that she'd react like that?" his companion protested, wiping cheeks smeared with yellow and orange. "S'not my fault you never told me Malorians were offended by sneezin'."

"You didn't JUST sneeze, though! You sneezed in the Queen's direction! It's a very serious offense. Besides, how was I supposed to know you were going to develop a sudden case of hay fever? I can't be responsible for your inferior human systems..." The Doctor grinned cheekily at Rose, hands jammed deep in the pockets of his long trench coat - a trench coat that was even now smudged with every hue of powder and glitter imaginable.

"I thought her head was going to jus'... pop!" Rose gestured widely with her hands.

"Lucky for you capital punishment on Maloria is death by good ol' fashioned powderin'." The Doctor spread his arms, looking down at his color-smeared clothing. Rose mimicked the gesture, wrinkling her nose as she picked at what had been a solid pink sweatshirt but was now almost every other color instead.

"I don' see how this is supposed to do anything but ruin your outfit..."

"Oh, it doesn't do anything but stain. But that's the thing, Malorians have skin a lot like the fabric of your sweater. The color'll come out of your skin, but it wouldn't out of a Malorian's. They'd be ridiculously colored, forever. Though, next time we're sentenced to capital punishment, p'haps not laughing in the middle of it might be smart, yeah?"

He fixed her with a strict gaze. Rose affected an innocent look. "Wasn't my fault! It was just so ridiculous - them all throwing handfuls of glitter at us and actin' like it was the end of the world an' all... C'mon, you have to admit it was a _little_ bit ridiculous."

The Doctor kept that stern look on his face only for a moment more, ruining it with the sparkle in his eyes - a sparkle quickly followed by one of his ear to ear grins. "All right, quite ridiculous then. Anyway, all done with that. Go an' wash up an' we'll decide where to go next."

He turned to the ship's consoles as Rose headed deeper into the TARDIS, tilting his head back to regard the tall funnel in the middle. She was strangely silent, which worried him. If there was one thing he knew about his ship, it was the hum of her, the constant noise of her. Tonight, however... Tonight, she was thoughtful. Pensive - if one could use such a word to describe a ship, sentient or no. He pressed his palms to the controllers, frowning deeply.

"What's wrong, old girl?" he murmured, under his breath. The console was warm and smooth under his palms, but the ship remained stoically still.

By the time his blonde companion returned to the console room, his coat and suit were, mysteriously, powder-free. She was pulling a brush through her long, bleached hair, clad in clean jeans and a white tee. She strolled across the floor to lean against the central panel, crossing one leg over the other as she eyed him.

"So. Where we going?"

Even before the words had finished leaving her lips, the walls around them shuddered. The entire ship convulsed, the floor underneath their feet bucking hard as the screech of protesting metal ripped through the air.

"Doctor! What's happening?" Rose wrapped her arms around one of the upright metal fixtures on the TARDIS's central control system, clinging for dear life as the ship around them rocked back and forth, the normal groaning-woosh of the systems taking on a frantic and terrified tone. Rose had never heard the TARDIS sound _terrified_ before.

"I don't know - the TARDIS has gone crazy! Hold on!"

Several of the dials on the TARDIS's console exploded in small cascades of sparks, scattering pieces of glass across floor, panels, human, and Time Lord alike. Rose shrieked, hiding her face against her arm as the Doctor clung to several levers, trying vainly to re-exert some form of control over his ship's crazed movements.

With a ripple of pops, several of the transparent circles set into the TARDIS's skin shattered, the entire ship groaning once again as the ship jerked in a different direction. Rose nearly tumbled from her grip on the central console, her wide, frightened eyes finding the Doctor.

"Make it stop!" she yelled. The Doctor half-growled a response that Rose was pretty sure contained language the TARDIS would normally translate to nonsense. He was somehow still on his feet, despite the fact that the ship was dipping and carreening wildly and half of the controls were sparking wildly. The other half seemed to be flipping and twisting with a mind of their own, only tempered by the Doctor's mad attempts to rein them in.

"I can't! Something's got us and I don't know what! Where's that button, that blasted button-? Ah! Here it is!"

"What button?"

He paused long enough for Rose to see the maniac light in his eyes. It was a light that meant that whatever was going to happen was probably more dangerous than even he would let on. That look had gotten her into so much trouble... "The emergency brake!"

Then he slammed his hand down on the only big, mauve button on the console. Mauve, of course it was. Hadn't he always told her mauve was the universal color for danger? Fantastic.

The TARDIS ground to a halt, throwing Rose at last from her desperate grip and against the floor. A storm of sparks ricocheted from controls and displays around the ship's interior, then the lights blinked one final time and went out. The ship gave one last, low moan as it settled, and was finally still.

Rose wasn't sure how long it was before her head stopped spinning long enough for her to realize the Doctor was already over her, his hands warm on her arms.

"Rose? Rose, are you okay?"

"Wah? Oh... yeah, yeah, I think so." She got to her feet with his help, running her hands down the sides of her pants as much out of nerves as the desire to make sure that she really was in one piece, with all vital appendages still attached. The control room was filled with a fine, low layer of smoke, the central column dark and silent. "Doctor... Is the TARDIS... is she...?"

"Dead? No, not this time." He leaned over the controls, squinting through his glasses at several of the readings. "The last time we were dragged through to a parallel world, I made some minor modifications. Upgraded her firewalls, if you will. Created a system back-up, in layman's terms. Still, we're somewhere new. Somewhere she's not meant to go, and that means there's not enough energy to keep her quite as lively as normal."

He reached up to the center tube, patting it as lovingly and tenderly as she'd ever seen him. "She just needs time to regroup. She'll pull energy from the central matrix and the back-up arctrun stores I hooked up just in case this happened again and then we'll be back to normal, chips and gravy an' all."

Rose moved up beside him, looking up at his face with a furrow in her brow. "Hold on, Doctor. You said... 'last time'. Does this mean we've traveled to a parallel world again? Are we not in our own universe?"

"'Fraid not. Something got a good hold of us and dragged us right through the space-time vortex, just like reeling in a fish. Well - two somethings. Well - two somethings that were obviously fighting over us." His fingers flew over the panels and buttons, eyes darting from the main screen to the dials and toggles underneath his fingertips.

"Two somethings? Fighting?"

He pulled the main screen around so that she could see it clearly, pointing at the display as if the nonsensical symbols, wiggles, and strangely volatile line in the middle would make any sense whatsoever to her. She'd long ago learned that the TARDIS didn't bother to translate things that it knew she wouldn't in a million years understand, anyway. Thankfully, the Doctor was still jabbering on, and all Rose had to do was nod her head and stare at the line on the screen that started going out one way, then abruptly twisted in another direction.

"See, here, this is our original flight path. Then, here, something grabbed us. Hooked on to the vortex, to the heart of the TARDIS itself, and began to pull us along. I'm not sure how far we traveled - a long way, certainly - before suddenly we changed direction. Something _else_ was pulling us, like a football being kicked mid-pass to another player. The question is... how would something lock on to us in the first place, nevermind _two_ somethings?"

He stared at the screen as if willing it to divulge his secrets. Rose let him stare until it was obvious that he wasn't about to have any sudden epiphanies. Finally, she prompted him by leaning further into his view.

"Then _where_ are we, Doctor?"

He turned to her and grinned. "No idea! Let's find out, shall we?"

In one motion, he grabbed his coat and hopped down from the central platform towards the main doors. "Doctor, wait!" Rose scrambled for her own sweatshirt, following him as he took both doors and swung them wide open. Light flooded into the dim interior of the TARDIS and they stood framed, once again, in the new air of an entirely new universe.

They were in the middle of a garden, a sea of multi-colored pansies nodding their bright heads at the clear blue sky overhead, gauzy white clouds slipping past the golden sun. In front of them, past the leafy reaches of a row of tomato plants, was a white-walled house with the paint chipping on the corners. It was a good, proper home, with a second floor, windows open to let in the warm springtime air, and a wide back porch with the back door slightly open to reveal the screen door beyond. Rose could see, however, rents in the roof as if something large like a tree had fallen on the tiles and dug out long swathes of them.

So, for the third time, Rose put her hand around the Doctor's arm and asked, "where are we?"

He cast an amused look at her, sliding his sonic screwdriver from inside his jacket. With a jerk, it was suddenly open and humming. He cast it back and forth for a moment before snapping it shut with a decided flick, tucking it into his pocket.

"Earth, the United States - Pennsylvania to be exact. Seems to be May 21st, 2015."

"Pennsylvania? Where in America is that?" Rose cast a low look around the garden. The backyard needed a good trimming, there were weeds growing up everywhere, but beyond the weeds were trees - old, big trees. Beyond their leafy boughs, however, they could hear the distant hum of traffic. A highway, then, or a main road. So this parallel world had cars, like normal. Like hers, rather.

The Doctor opened his mouth to answer when he was cut off by the most peculiar sound - the bugle of a horn. No, Rose thought a second later. It was much too large, much too brazen, to be a horn. It was something entirely different.

Then something large, something winged, and something blue dropped from the sky, landing on the roof of the porch and tilting its slim, wedge-shaped head back. It - the _dragon_ - trumpeted, its wings flaring on either side of it as its head snaked down, whirling blue eyes focusing on Rose and the Doctor. It was blue - TARDIS blue, Rose thought irrationally - and its great maw parted to let a ripple of scalding air rush from between long, very sharp teeth. It was wearing a shining silver helm along its wedge-shaped head, rubies glinting from along the length of its snout. A breastplate with intricate silver guards lined its chest and the main part of its wings, completed by the twisting metal guards along its legs and framing metal claws over its natural ones.

"D-Doctor," Rose stammered, clutching at his arm. She could feel the strangest pressure right behind her eyes, like something in her head banging against the inside of her skull. Probably panic, she thought. "That's - That's a real dragon, yeah?"

He was, of course, no use, staring at the creature before him with this huge, goofy grin on his face. "Oh, that's _beautiful._ Look, Rose, a dragon! Isn't that fantastic?"

"Yeah, real fantastic, but don't you think, Doctor, that we should, I don't know, run or something?"

The screen door swung open, and a young woman stepped out, apparently oblivious to the giant reptile currently curled around the top of her house. She was young, looking only to be seventeen or eighteen - not too much younger than Rose herself, she realized. She looked normal enough with long, straight brown hair, clad in jeans and a short sleeved red button-up shirt. A strap hung across from shoulder to hip and at first Rose thought it a purse, but as the young woman walked towards them she realized what she'd thought was a purse was, in fact, a book. A very large, very old looking book.

Behind her, the dragon hopped down from the porch, wings still flared and swirling blue eyes staring at them, as if just daring them to move so it could deep fry them like cheap chips.

"The-the dragon-" Rose managed as the young woman drew up close to them, pointing behind her. The brunette glanced over her shoulder, then back at the both of them with an arched eyebrow.

"Good job, you identified the flying, fire-breathing lizard. Now, mind telling me what you're doing in my garden with a big blue box right in the middle of my poor pansies?" The young woman folded her arms over her chest, and Rose and the Doctor glanced at each other, a bit taken aback. Before they could answer, however, she rolled her eyes and turned towards the dragon, clearly speaking to it. "I know you're not a lizard, but - Listen, it was called _sarcasm_, you - Theo! Focus! Strange people in the garden! Sort of more important than your lizard-complex."

The dragon huffed. Quite literally, let all of the air in his lungs out in a very human-like huff, his wings folding back against his back. Then he turned back towards Rose and the Doctor, and she got the very strange sensation of thudding in her head again. Only, this time it seemed that there were snippets and fragments of thoughts that leaked through, like snatches of a conversation she couldn't quite hear.

"Doctor, my head-"

"I know," he said, low under his breath, flicking out his sonic screwdriver once more. The dragon's head snapped up again, clearly ready to incinerate them both, but held his fire when the Doctor flicked the small stylus around before frowning at it. "It's a telepathic message. Only, it's not working like it's supposed to, because we're not right, we're just a little bit out of sync with everyone else. Hold on, the TARDIS is compensating... All right then, that should do it."

He jammed his hands back in his pockets, and looked back at the girl and reptile in front of him, smiling once more. "Now then. Sorry 'bout that. I'm the Doctor, and this is Rose. If I'm not incorrect, your dragon there was just trying to talk to us. Unfortunately we were having a bit of a hearing problem if you can call it that - which, since the real explanation would take four days and three hours to go through we'll say yes, we can call it that. And who would you two be?"

The young woman stared at him. Then she looked at the dragon. Then she looked back at them. "You're... British?"

"I am," Rose volunteered. "He's... close enough."

The young woman sighed, pressing a hand to her forehead. "Well, that explains everything. Look, you two. I know things have been a bit hectic over there and yes, I know that your nation has more magicals per capita than just about any other place except most of the eastern seaboard, but... really. We established the Embassies for you all to direct your complaints there, to your respective Princess. _Not_." She fixed them both with a pointed look. "Teleported in to the _middle of my pansies._"

The Doctor reached up, tugging his ear as he glanced at Rose out of the corner of his eyes. She shrugged, as confused as he was. "Right... well, it seems there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. We're not... here for any particular reason. Well - any reason that we know of. Right now anyway. What'd you say your name was?"

_~Don't joke. How do you not know who she is?~_

Rose gasped at the sound of the dragon's voice inside of her head. It was like a flurry of bells all chiming in her head, somehow all making perfect sense as the words bloomed with hues of blue behind her eyes. It was one of the most amazing and beautiful things she'd ever heard in her entire life. The Doctor seemed less affected, patting Rose's hand reassuringly as he replied, utterly calm, "we're not from around here. And we've no clue what you're talking about, sorry to say."

"Where've you been for the past three years? How could you _not_ know? I'm her - I'm the one you'll have heard about on the news and the like." The young woman stared at them as if she couldn't quite believe they didn't know who she was. But it didn't seem like she was proudly declaring it, Rose thought. No, there was the weight of responsibility in her tone, not some vain airiness.

"Sorry, not big news watchers," Rose interjected with a half-smile.

The brunette reached down and patted the book hanging from her side. "I'm Toby. I'm the Storyteller." And the way she said it, Rose couldn't help but look at the Doctor. Because she said it the same way he said his own name - with a great deal of heaviness and thoughtfulness, the words so much more full of meaning than three little syllables ever had the right to bear_._

_~They really don't know,~_ the dragon exclaimed, his head tilting to one side just like a dog's would. It was a strangely endearing gesture.

Toby exhaled. "Just _where_ are you two from?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," the Doctor said mildly.

The brunette folded her arms over her chest and fixed them with a steady look. Her eyes were green, flecked with strange bits of gold in them that never seemed to sit just normal. They weren't the eyes of a normal seventeen year old. They were so much older than their time; they were the eyes of someone who might just believe them.

Behind her, the dragon abruptly began to shrink, swirling blue pulling back from the edges of his form and drawing it with them, until he was no bigger than the size of a normal teenage boy. Claws became hands; a muzzle became a mouth, and swirling blue eyes settled in to a distinctly human face, disheveled, spiky blue hair and all. One hand rested on the hilt of a silver sword somehow sheathed at his hip.

"Brilliant," breathed the Doctor again, under his breath.

Toby didn't even glance over her shoulder, her gaze on the Doctor. "Try me."


	4. Chapter 2

2.

She wasn't quite sure what sort of magicals they were, yet. They'd showed up in the middle of her garden in true magical fashion, complete with what seemed like a museum piece police box - she'd been to London enough times in the past couple of years to know that those police boxes weren't exactly commonplace. It was, however, far too modern to be a relic from before the Sleep. So Toby was left wondering what on earth had possessed two magicals to raid a museum and then transport the whole thing with them directly into her pansies.

She had to stifle another mental groan. Her poor pansies. She'd just gotten them to bloom after the gnome debacle had destroyed them last year and now half of them were squished flat once more. Her poor, poor little flowers.

Still, they seemed ... well, not normal, but reasonable enough. They were currently sitting around her kitchen table, drinking soda and eating potato chips. The tall man - "the Doctor", whatever that meant - was chattering away about the difference between British chips (french fries) and American chips (potato chips) and how funny it was. The blonde woman - who, if Toby judged correctly wasn't too much older than Toby herself - hadn't said much, but was staring at Theodore with big, round eyes. Theo had been standoffish until the Doctor's chatter and his easy charm had won him over, and now they were trading stories about chips in ancient England.

No surprise how Theo knew about the time he'd grown up in, before the Sleep, but how did this strange man keep talking about the past like he'd personally been there?

Toby's fingers strayed towards the Tome hanging at her side, but she schooled the impulse. Some magicals got highly offended when she jumped right into reading their Story. Considering that this Doctor and his companion had teleported right through some of the strongest magical wards anyone alive knew how to conjure, Toby wasn't quite keen on angering them. Yet.

Besides, her House hadn't tried to eat them, and House was an impeccable judge of character.

"So. Toby." She straightened up; apparently the Doctor had reached the end of his chatter and was now regarding her with that level, scrutinizing gaze of his. Toby had faced down berserker Troll warchiefs and Fairy queens and everything in between, but there was something about the way that he looked at her that made her slightly uneasy. "Can you tell me a bit about... that?" He leveled one finger at the top of the table. No, at the book still hanging, out of sight, at her side.

"The Tome? What about it?"

"As you may have gathered, Rose and I aren't exactly from around here. In fact, we're not from this world at all. Something - or someone - brought us here. Now my ship runs on a very particular energy, a psychic energy that isn't found anywhere else in the universe, no where else in any reality, except for my people's ships." He folded his arms and leaned forward. "And... that book."

Toby glanced at Theo. He'd always been good at detecting malicious intent - a side-effect from dragons being naturally empathetic and completely telepathic. He simply shrugged one shoulder in a gesture that Toby knew meant _it's your choice._

She reached down and pulled the Tome from the holder it sat in, like a sheath to a sword, and set it upon the table. A small puff of dust billowed out from the edges of its pages. Three years she'd had this, now, and it still acted like it'd been nearly a thousand years since it'd been opened or even touched.

"It's my Tome, my... way of seeing into the world. You say you're not from around here, all right, I'll buy it. I've seen some crazy stuff, magical space travel through an old box isn't the craziest. I'm the Storyteller. I'm the one responsible for making sure things go smoothly between Earth and Believe, including handling any... conflicts that arise between magicals and mundanes."

The Doctor held up a hand. "I'm sorry - Believe?"

Toby inhaled, shifting forward slightly. "Well... you know Earth. Lying right next to it, connected in many points, is Believe. It's like... another half of our world that you can only get to through certain entrances. And the citizens of that part are called magicals .They're the stuff of fairy tales and legends - dragons, fairies, unicorns, you name it, we've got it."

"Boggarts?" Rose chimed, cheekily.

"There's a family of them in Chester, it's not too far from here, and about two dozen living in Philadelphia. Of course, good luck catching them unless they're in the midst of pulling a prank on you."

The blonde leaned back in her seat, chastised. Toby turned back to the Doctor, running her fingers along the spine of the book. "It's the mark of my office, the power behind the Storyteller, and it's the only one in existence. It allows me to know what I need to know to keep our two worlds existing in as much harmony as possible. Recently, however, it's..." She trailed off, a frown on her face. "... been off."

"Been off? How so?"

"It just keeps saying the same thing, over and over again... I don't understand it, the Story can't tell me anything beyond those two words." Toby raised her eyes without lifting her head, studying the Doctor intently. Finally, she sighed. "The Fairy Godmother's going to have a caniption that I'm doing this with a complete stranger, but..."

She flicked the Tome open. The smooth white pages were blank, and Toby couldn't help but smile faintly at the look of confusion on the Doctor and Rose's faces. Before they could object, however, something began to sprawl itself across the pages as if written by a hand that was neither visible nor tangible. Just two large, bold words that stretched from one edge of the book to the other, written plainly, boldly, urgently, as they had been for weeks now.

_**BAD WOLF.**_

As one, both the Doctor and Rose stood up so violently that their chairs went clattering to the ground. "Doctor!" Rose gasped, grabbing his arm.

"I know, I know!" he snapped, teeth gritted, a look of wild intensity about him that made Toby straighten up in her chair. Then he reached forward towards the book.

"No, don't-!" Toby flung herself forward, but it was too late. He'd grabbed the page as if he was about to turn it. She whipped her hands up to protect her gaze from the flash of the Tome's self defense spell, the inevitable mini-explosion that came anyone tried to touch the pages of the magical book. Instead, from outside, she could hear a strange noise - like the slow inwards outwards groan of air across a vibrating piece of metal.

"... impossible..." The Doctor breathed. Toby lowered her eyes to find the man's hand still gripping the book. But instead of being blown back ten feet, like the Storyteller would have expected, he was standing there, hand on the bare pages, while her Tome pulsed with light.

In tandem with the noise from outside.

"They recognize the link... Incredible!"

"Doctor, what? What is it? Why are those words on the pages? What's going on?" Rose leaned forward next to the Doctor but didn't touch the book, just stared at the tall man with a slightly breathy terror in her eyes. Whatever the words meant, they meant something to these two. Something big.

"What're you doing to the Tome?" Toby shoved herself to her feet, reaching to snatch the book away. Instead, the Doctor grabbed her wrist and shoved her hand, palm down, on the page.

"We need two feeds, two inputs, to sync them up!" He yelled at her, but Toby could barely hear him over the noise rushing through her ears, the pounding from behind her eyes. Because she was touching the pages, and she still couldn't control it, even now, even so many years later. Her eyes were locked on the man in front of her and all she could do was hang on as the Story shoved its way into her mind, feeding her years and years of glimpses, of clips, of half-remembered days and fully remembered instances standing clear in her mind as stark flashes in the midst of the sweep of ages going by. Because it was ages - it wasn't just years, it was so much more, so many more - and his story was so much bigger than anything she'd ever been forced to take in at once, so much grander and darker and _more_.

So it was with no surprise that when she finally came to, she was on her back staring up at the kitchen, Theo hovering over her protectively. Reading someone's Story had gotten easier for her over the years, to the point where she could usually stay standing when she was doing so. That, however, had been different from any Story she'd ever read before. She blinked several times, lowering her eyes to find the Doctor and Rose backed against far side of the kitchen, the Doctor still calmly patting a singed and smoking part of his sleeve. Theodore might have been in human form, but he could still breathe fire. Maybe she should have warned them.

Nah, they didn't look too burnt.

"Toby," Theo breathed. "Toby, look at me." His eyes were shining with love and fear, his hands cupping her cheeks tenderly.

She tried to speak, swallowed, and tried again, reaching up to brush the side of his face reassuringly. "It's okay. I'm okay. It was just... stronger than normal. There was more in it. Help me up." His arms slid around her waist and he easily lifted her to her feet, not letting go of her even once her feet were fully on the ground. She leaned into him, breathed the warm, smoke-tinged scent of him, and tried to get the throbbing out of her head.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said from behind them. "I'm so sorry - I didn't know..."

Theo bristled, but Toby put her hands on his chest and stared at him quietly until he forced himself to deflate. The last thing she needed was for her boyfriend to set the kitchen on fire. Again. Then she turned to look at the tall man. The Time Lord. The man who was over nine hundred years old. The man who'd seen more than she could possibly imagine. The man who was here, even though he wasn't supposed to be.

"It's ok. You don't have the Story in your world - just your TARDIS." Toby's eyes swept to the window and she could see the square outline of the box standing amongst her bobbing pansies. It was alive - she knew that now. Knew that it had come here not by accident but by some means she didn't quite understand... but she had a strong feeling that the Doctor had already figured out a lot more than he'd yet let on. "I don't understand. Your world should be completely cut off from ours - you said it yourself."

The Doctor's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he managed a strangled noise of surprise. "... that's true, I did. But how did you know that?" His eyes flickered to the ancient, still-dusty book lying with deceptive stillness on the kitchen table, the words BAD WOLF slowly fading out and being re-written, over and over again. "... it downloaded into your brain."

"Wha, like Station 5 and the -?" Rose snapped her fingers.

"Sort of, but not exactly. She has a mental link with the book. It, in turn, can access information and provide it directly into her mind. Viola! - Instant and complete knowledge at her very fingertips. It's brilliant, it's what it is... and dangerous. Very dangerous." He turned a serious gaze towards Toby. She felt her stomach wrench.

"Don't." Her tone was sharper than she'd meant, but she didn't back down. "Don't look at me with that pity in your eyes. I can handle it, and I'm sick of people thinking I can't just because some of the ones before me couldn't. I chose it just as much as it chose me."

A slow smile spread across the Doctor's lips.

"Good girl. Now, we should probably talk about the real issue at hand - how, and why, we got here."

"I thought you had a ship," Theo said, jerking his head over his shoulder at the blue box in the garden still framed in the kitchen window.

"But we didn't mean to come here. We were headed somewheres else. Someone ... hijacked us," Rose protested.

"Who would be capable of doing that?" Toby asked quietly, a furrow in her brow.

"Other than you, you mean," the Doctor replied with that amused expression still hovering on his face, hands in his pockets once more. "You and your little book, that is."

"But I didn't - I couldn't've -" Toby felt her head swim. She'd brought them here? But how? There'd been nothing out of the ordinary - well, any more out of the ordinary than normal. If anything about her life could even be called normal without being completely snarky or ironic, that was. Even her dreams had - "oh."

"'Oh'?" repeated the Doctor, regarding her intently.

"Three weeks ago. I had a dream - not unusual, but I've gotten better about dealing with them. I've had... help." She glanced over at Theo and couldn't help but color slightly. For his part, the dragon stared resolutely at a spot just over the Doctor's head. "But this dream, it was different. There was this woman's voice. She was crying for help, that something had her and it was trying to drag her into the darkness. That's what she kept saying - 'Into the empty dark.' So... I reached for her, to pull her free."

Toby sighed. "When I woke up, I was sick to my stomach, weak, feverish. It took nearly three days for me to feel better again."

"That wasn't just a dream. You heard her - you heard my TARDIS. Something had her and she reached through the Time-Space Vortex - what you call 'the Story' - and found you. You, one of the only beings in any world or universe that has a connection to the Vortex strong enough to help her. You pulled her free... and conversely, us into this world."

"But that was weeks ago!" Theo protested.

The Doctor shrugged nonchalantly. "Emergency brake. Must have stopped us earlier than was meant to be. Well - to you, later, since we were heading opposite directions."

"So I brought you here," Toby managed, her voice trembling ever so slightly. "I... rescued your ship. But... from who?"

The Doctor placed his hands on the table once more, a dark look on his face. "Ah... That's the question, now, innit?"


End file.
